With the Synthetic Fuels Act, the Carter administration offered subsidies to firms making liquid fuel from coal, in order to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.
Unfortunately, the bill only specified that coal be turned to liquid not that it had to be turned into internal-combustion engine fuels (since the 1973 oil crisis, well over half of all US oil consumption has been for transport).
This meant that millions of taxpayers' dollars were squandered paying coal companies to turn coal into dirty slurry (useless for internal combustion engines) before burning it.
What if he'd done it right?